Why am I Changing my Book Covers?
- Jenna Moreci
- Nov 4
- 5 min read
HelloOoOo everybody!
Thank you so much for your support during the release of How to Write Romantasy. The release went absolutely amazing. If you haven't picked up a copy of How to Write Romantasy yet, now's the time to do it. I got it linked right here!
On to today's topic. You guys asked for it, and I'm here to deliver. Why exactly did I change the covers of The Savior’s Series? This is a very fair question with a very pragmatic answer. I needed to change the covers for three specific reasons, and I'm breaking them down right now.
If you haven’t already, don’t forget to also subscribe to my YouTube channel for more writing tips, sarcasm, and of course, more of Princess Butters!
Reason Number One: The Cover Artists
The original Savior's Champion and Savior’s Sister covers were actually designed by different artists. I had a great experience with The Savior's Champion’s cover artist, but unfortunately, they went out of business. So naturally, I went to a different cover artist for The Savior's Sister. And while I'm happy with how the cover turned out, working with that designer was awful. They were difficult. They didn’t follow directions, but worst of all, they were kind of scammy. They issued a ton of hidden fees, and the price for their work ended up being almost double what I expected based on their rate sheet.
Let me put it this way. The original Savior’s Sister cover cost more than all three of the new covers combined. Because of this, I have absolutely no interest in working with them ever again. Which means now that I'm releasing The Savior's Army, I need to hire another cover artist. It's hard enough for one artist to match the style of another artist, let alone one artist matching the style of two other artists—especially when I don't have the original Photoshop files for them to refer to.
Thus, it made sense to start fresh rather than give my new artist the biggest headache of their life.
Reason Number Two: Pricing
There are a few things that go into pricing a book. Notably, the cost of production as well as the wholesale discount. Let's start with production. The Savior's Champion and The Savior’s Sister are big books. The bigger the book, the more expensive it is to print physical copies. The more expensive they are to print, the higher these books have to be priced in order to make a profit.
Then there is the wholesale discount. This is a special discount for places like Barnes & Noble, so that they can buy your book at a reduced price, and then sell your book to readers for full price. That way, they still make a profit from selling the book. And platforms like IngramSpark, that focus on distributing hardback and paperback books, usually have a minimum wholesale discount that you need to follow in order to use their platform.
Herein lies the issue. When I first uploaded The Savior's Champion and The Savior’s Sister to IngramSpark, the minimum wholesale discount was 30%. But a few years ago, IngramSpark changed its minimum from 30% to 40%. This might not make sense to you. Math can be hard. But long story short, because of this 10% increase, I am only making about $1 profit per physical book sold. That's right, $1.
There are only two ways to combat this issue. Either significantly raise the book's price, which would negatively impact you, the reader. Or tweak the book's formatting so it has a lower page count, because the fewer pages the book has, the cheaper it is to print. And if a book is cheaper to print, my profits go up. I decided that tweaking the formatting was the way to go because I didn’t want to raise the price for you guys. And honestly, I cannot continue to live off of $1 per physical book sold. I'm not doing that shit anymore.
But here's the kicker. If you tweak the book's formatting, you also have to tweak its physical book cover because a skinnier book requires a skinnier spine. As we already covered, the designer who designed The Savior's Champion cover is no longer in business, so they can't do that for me. And I'm never working with The Savior’s Sister’s cover artist ever again. This means if I wanted my book skinnier, I probably needed new covers.
And Reason Number Three (and the Easiest Reason To Explain): Cover Trends.
When I first released The Savior's Champion, fantasy romance was only just gaining popularity. The term “romantasy” hadn't even been coined yet. Because of that, there weren't really any cover trends to study. The only references I had were fantasy books with romantic subplots.
Now, romantasy is a booming genre, which means there are cover expectations. Readers can look at a book cover and know instantly that it's a romantasy story. Now, I love the original cover of The Savior's Champion. I think it’s insanely beautiful.
But unfortunately, it doesn't quite fit romantasy cover trends. Because of that, new readers aren't going to look at it and know instantly that it's romantasy. This is a big detriment to me as an author. It means that I'm not reaching my target audience. It also means that I'm potentially attracting the wrong kind of readers. The sort of readers who are expecting Brandon Sanderson’s type of content. And that is not at all what I’m going for with this series.
Thus, it became very clear to me that I needed to update my covers in order for them to match the current romantasy cover expectations. This is super common in the publishing industry. I'm sure you can think of a bunch of series that got new covers over time. Obvious examples are ACOTAR, Quicksilver, and The Bridge Kingdom.
So that's all I've got for you today!
Those are my three reasons. I love the original covers, I think they're timeless. But I love the new covers too. If you'd like to pick up the new covers, you totally should. We’ve got new designs, we’ve got new, beautiful formatting. I even did a little copy edit of the writing itself so that the voice and style can match that of The Savior's Army.
And speaking of, I will be hitting you with details about The Savior's Army very, very soon. We may or may not have a cover reveal video, as well as a release date on the horizon.
If you haven’t checked out How to Write Romantasy yet, you know what you do… You've got to go order a copy. It's linked right here.
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